It by Stephen King

was, but he was sure he always wore white suits, read Esquire, and drank things which came in tall glasses and smelled like coconut-scented shampoo. “I told him right away—trying to explain to your mother how you picked it up from a Haitian girl. Until next time, this is Kinky Briefcase, Sexual Accountant, saying ‘You need my card if you can’t get hard.’ ”
    Carol Feeny screamed with laughter. “That’s perfect! Perfect! My boyfriend says he doesn’t believe you can just do those voices, he says it’s got to be a voice-filter gadget or something—”
    â€œJust talent, my dear,” Rich said. Kinky Briefcase was gone. W. C. Fields, top hat, red nose, golf-bags and all, was here. “I’m so stuffed with talent I have to plug up all my bodily orifices to keep it from just running out like . . . well, just running out.”
    She went off into another screamy gale of laughter, and Rich closed his eyes. He could feel the beginnings of a headache.
    â€œBe a dear and see what you can do, would you?” he asked, still being W. C. Fields, and hung up on her laughter.
    Now he had to go back to being himself, and that was hard—it got harder to do that every year. It was easier to be brave when you were someone else.
    He was trying to pick out a pair of good loafers and had about decided to stick with sneakers when the phone rang again. It was Carol Feeny, back in record time. He felt an instant urge to fall into the Buford Kissdrivel Voice and fought it off. She had been able to get him a first-class seat on the American Airlines red-eye nonstop from LAX to Boston. He would leave L.A. at 9:03 P.M. and arrive at Logan about five o’clock tomorrow morning. Delta would fly him out of Boston at 7:30 A.M. and into Bangor, Maine, at 8:20. She had gotten him a full-sized sedan from Avis, and it was only twenty-six miles from the Avis counter at Bangor International Airport to the Derry town line.
    Only twenty-six miles? Rich thought. Is that all, Carol? Well, maybe it is—in miles, anyway. But you don’t have the slightest idea how far it really is to Derry, and I don’t, either. But oh God, oh dear God, I am going to find out.
    â€œI didn’t try for a room because you didn’t tell me how long you’d be there,” she said. “Do you—”
    â€œNo—let me take care of that,” Rich said, and then Buford Kissdrivel took over. “You’ve been a peach, my deah. A Jawja peach, a cawse.”
    He hung up gently on her—always leave em laughing—and then dialed 207-555-1212 for State of Maine Directory Assistance. He wanted a number for the Derry Town House. God, there was a name from the past. He hadn’t thought of the Derry Town House in—what?—ten years? twenty? twenty-five years, even? Crazy as it seemed, he guessed it had been at least twenty-five years, and if Mike hadn’t called, he supposed he might never have thought of it again in his life. And yet there had been a time in his life when he had walked past that great red brick pile every day—and on more than one occasion he had run past it, with Henry Bowers and Belch Huggins and that other big boy, Victor Somebody or-Other, in hot pursuit, all of them yelling little pleasantries like We’re gonna getcha, fuckface! Gonna getcha, you little smartass! Gonna getcha, you foureyed faggot! Had they ever gotten him?
    Before Rich could remember, an operator was asking him what city, please.
    â€œIn Derry, operator—”
    Derry! God! Even the word felt strange and forgotten in his mouth; saying it was like kissing an antique.
    â€œâ€”do you have a number for the Derry Town House?”
    â€œOne moment, sir.”
    No way. It’ll be gone. Razed in an urban-renewal program. Changed into an Elks’ Hall or a Bowl-a-Drome or an Electric Dreamscape Video Arcade. Or maybe burned down one night when the odds